NEW DELHI: With the Prime Minister ruling out a roll-back of demonetisation, the Opposition, cutting across party lines, has joined hands to take on the government in the winter session of Parliament.
A meeting is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, when West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee lands in the capital.
However, the Opposition parties could not agree on the timing of their protest march to Rashtrapati Bhavan.
While the Trinamool has already taken an appointment to meet the President on Wednesday at 1.30 pm, the Congress and the Left parties were undecided. “We feel that there’s no scope for procrastination, but they feel it could deferred by a week,” party spokesperson Derek O’Brien said.
Apart from the Congress’ Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma and Mallikarjun Kharge, Trinamool and the Left parties, the JD(U)’s Sharad Yadav, the RJD’s Prem Chand Gupta, the JMM’s Sushil Kumar and the YSRCongress’ M Rajamohan Reddy too attended Monday’s meeting.
For the Opposition, it could be a bit of concern that the NCP, DMK, AIADMK and the BJD gave their Monday meeting a miss, despite Mamata calling up every non-NDA party.
Azad, of course, claimed that some of them, like DMK members were travelling. As for the government sides, allies like the Shiv Sena and the SAD could cause headache. While Sena chief Udhav Thackeray has openly criticised the Prime Minister on demonitisation, the SAD is upset with the timing of the move, given the fact that the Punjab polls are round the corner.
BSP supremo Mayawati, stung by the apparent reference to her in Narendra Modi’s “garland of notes” remark, unleashed a no-holds-barred attack on Modi, saying he couldn’t tolerate that a “Dalit ki beti” is presented such a garland.